Recommendation for 4 or 5 TB USB drive?

I'm looking for an external USB drive of 4 TB or larger and would
appreciate a few opinions here please. The trouble with my recent
decision to focus on the critical reviews at amazon.co.uk is that I
quickly reach the conclusion that there's *no* satisfactory drive on
the market!

Apart from quietness, fast start-up time after idle periods and
no-brainer setup, the only requirement I have is that, unlike one WD
drive I came across, it should support Win 10's system image facility.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Terry Pinnell wrote:
I'm looking for an external USB drive of 4 TB or larger and would
appreciate a few opinions here please. The trouble with my recent
decision to focus on the critical reviews at amazon.co.uk is that I
quickly reach the conclusion that there's *no* satisfactory drive on
the market!

Apart from quietness, fast start-up time after idle periods and
no-brainer setup, the only requirement I have is that, unlike one WD
drive I came across, it should support Win 10's system image facility.


The external drive business is a strange one.

It's getting harder and harder to get an
enclosure with a decent feature set.

When you buy a pre-assembled drive, they can
stick any drive they want inside. The firmware
will have the "fast spindown" setting in it, and
the enclosure won't have a fan.

You can get separate enclosures, but there isn't
much to choose from, either in Newegg, or on
your side of the pond. So I cannot get too excited
about assembling an external drive from scratch.

For a test, I plugged my 3TB Seagate into an ASM2105 powered
enclosure. I just keep the controller board out of the
enclosure and don't use the enclosure itself.

I booted Win10, switched on the drive (the controller
board has a power switch) and did a Windows 10 "Win7 backup".
After a while, things seemed to be going too slow, and it
turned out the stupid thing was running in USB2 mode. I
rebooted Windows 10, and it started using USB3 rates. I
verified with HDTune that it was running at the right
speed for that drive (about 200MB/sec near the outer edge).

The backup operation did complete.

The 3TB drive was formatted GPT, as one big partition. And
that aspect didn't seem to be a problem.

You can use a "dock", but then you wouldn't
have a fan to cool the drive. A dock orients the drive
standing on its end (drives can tolerate running
on any of the six possible axis). There are a couple
dock products that include a fan, but I don't know
how good they are.

The Seagate drive I bought, didn't have any of the weird symptoms
of the last batch of Seagate bought before that. So I
don't know if Seagate figured out they needed to clean up
their act, or what happened. So far the 3TB ST3000DM001
has not presented any bad symptoms at all. Even though
there is a better than even chance the drive will
eventually exhibit wearout symptoms. Similar drives
from a speed perspective are available up to 6TB.
They can do a 6TB 200MB/sec PMR drive, without
a helium fill.

ST6000NM0024 6TB 6 platter 512e SATA III drive
(you don't want the 4kn drive or the SAS one)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822178522

http://www.seagate.com/www-content/p...100740544g.pdf

Paul

Paul wrote:
Terry Pinnell wrote:
I'm looking for an external USB drive of 4 TB or larger and would
appreciate a few opinions here please. The trouble with my recent
decision to focus on the critical reviews at amazon.co.uk is that I
quickly reach the conclusion that there's *no* satisfactory drive on
the market!

Apart from quietness, fast start-up time after idle periods and
no-brainer setup, the only requirement I have is that, unlike one WD
drive I came across, it should support Win 10's system image facility.


The external drive business is a strange one.

It's getting harder and harder to get an
enclosure with a decent feature set.

When you buy a pre-assembled drive, they can
stick any drive they want inside. The firmware
will have the "fast spindown" setting in it, and
the enclosure won't have a fan.

You can get separate enclosures, but there isn't
much to choose from, either in Newegg, or on
your side of the pond. So I cannot get too excited
about assembling an external drive from scratch.

For a test, I plugged my 3TB Seagate into an ASM2105 powered
enclosure. I just keep the controller board out of the
enclosure and don't use the enclosure itself.

....

You can use a "dock", but then you wouldn't
have a fan to cool the drive. A dock orients the drive
standing on its end (drives can tolerate running
on any of the six possible axis). There are a couple
dock products that include a fan, but I don't know
how good they are.

....

Why not buy adapters and their cables without enclosures if you don't
mind carrying their parts?
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On Fri, 19 Aug 2016 14:38:59 +0100, Terry Pinnell
wrote:

I'm looking for an external USB drive of 4 TB or larger and would
appreciate a few opinions here please. The trouble with my recent
decision to focus on the critical reviews at amazon.co.uk is that I
quickly reach the conclusion that there's *no* satisfactory drive on
the market!

Apart from quietness, fast start-up time after idle periods and
no-brainer setup, the only requirement I have is that, unlike one WD
drive I came across, it should support Win 10's system image facility.

I have been using a Seagate GoFlex USB3 drive (4TB) drive and
enclosure for 18-24 months as a data backup. It has worked with no
problems. It is powered 24/7 but is only connected to the PC to make a
backup once per month. I also have an HGST 4TB drive that is installed
in a generic USB3 case (about a year now) and it also has no problems.
I have another HGST 4TB used as online storage in a RAID box. Again,
no problems.

I would say the 4TB drive technology is mature, so buying it is a safe
bet. That means the cost per TB is fairly low. Expect low prices for
drives as the holiday sale season is nearly upon us (particularly in
the US). Save your money and shop hard this year for a sharp deal.

On 8/20/2016 6:52 AM, wrote:
....
I have been using a Seagate GoFlex USB3 drive (4TB) drive and
enclosure for 18-24 months as a data backup. It has worked with no
problems. It is powered 24/7 but is only connected to the PC to make a
backup once per month. I also have an HGST 4TB drive that is installed
in a generic USB3 case (about a year now) and it also has no problems.
I have another HGST 4TB used as online storage in a RAID box. Again,
no problems.


Why do you power the USB driv 24/7 if you only use it once a month? It
would seem that powering it all the time only opens you up to power line
fault damage that could trash the drive.

On Sat, 20 Aug 2016 07:00:15 -0700, Bob F wrote:

On 8/20/2016 6:52 AM, wrote:
...
I have been using a Seagate GoFlex USB3 drive (4TB) drive and
enclosure for 18-24 months as a data backup. It has worked with no
problems. It is powered 24/7 but is only connected to the PC to make a
backup once per month. I also have an HGST 4TB drive that is installed
in a generic USB3 case (about a year now) and it also has no problems.
I have another HGST 4TB used as online storage in a RAID box. Again,
no problems.


Why do you power the USB driv 24/7 if you only use it once a month? It
would seem that powering it all the time only opens you up to power line
fault damage that could trash the drive.

The drive is connected to a battery UPS, as are all my electronics (I
have 3 battery UPSes), so power line issues are no problem. The
greatest wear-and-tear on electronics is startup, so leaving it
spinning reduces that issue. I can power it off and take it if needed.
My PC also runs 24/7.

I have been using the UPSes for some years. This building was hit by
lightning a few years ago. It took out a number of electrical stacks,
including several in my apartment. No problems with the devices (TV,
computer, external drives, router, game system, DVD player, etc)
connected to the UPSes. As the UPSes all have the manufacturer's
warranty to replace any device damaged if a power surge gets through
the UPS, it functions as replacement-cost insurance on the devices for
as long as I own and use the UPSes. Replacing the batteries every 4-5
years is CHEAP insurance.

On Fri, 19 Aug 2016 13:08:09 -0400, Paul wrote:

====snip====


You can use a "dock", but then you wouldn't have a fan to cool the
drive. A dock orients the drive standing on its end (drives can tolerate
running on any of the six possible axis). There are a couple dock
products that include a fan, but I don't know how good they are.


I think you're "over-thinking" the problem regarding the lack of forced
airflow cooling with these SATA docking stations, Paul.

Compared to the situation you so eloquently alluded to in regard of
Seagate's infamous unventilated "FreeAgent" external drives (employing
the equally infamous, permanently "set in the firmware 10 or 15 minute
spin down"[1], variants marked out by the suffix letter "S" on the end of
the model number, the same hot running "Maxtor-a-likes" will run far
cooler when plugged into a passively cooled docking station (and by quite
a wide margin to boot!).

Even if you're using a "Maxtor-a-like" ultra warm drive on a hot day,
it's unlikely to overheat but if you're worried about this, a small cheap
desk fan on its quietest setting will be more than ample to knock the
temperature down by a good ten degrees even from a metre away. Hell! If
you happen to own an asthmatic pet mouse, just placing its cage within a
few inches of said heat source would suffice! :-)

An ambient temperature of 30 deg C in most civilised locales would count
as "A Hot Day". The 60 deg maximum temperature limit, introduced by
Maxtor for their hard disk drives, btw, (prior to that, all IDE HDD
manufacturers had been specifying 55 deg C as the upper limit) means the
drive can have a temperature difference as high as 30 deg C before going
beyond the specified limit.

Realistically, you can expect a temperature gradient of around half of
that in free air even for 'hot drives'. If you mount such a drive in an
unventilated snug fitting metal enclosure with only a 10 to 15 percent
greater effective cooling surface than the drive itself, you can figure
on a slightly lower temperature gradient (say 12 deg) to transfer the
same amount of heat from the case into the atmosphere and then a much
larger temperature gradient between the drive and its enclosure to
transfer that heat into the metalwork of the enclosure itself (air, when
not allowed to flow freely makes a pretty effective insulator).

I wouldn't be at all surprised if such a drive would need to run hotter
than the enclosure itself by at least some 25 to 30 degrees to dissipate
its heat energy into the case. Add on the case to outside air temperature
gradient of, say 12 degrees (and assume the lower 25 degree figure) and
the drive itself could well be running some 37 degrees hotter than the
room ambient. If the room temperature is merely 'warmish' at 23 deg, the
drive will be sat right at the upper specified limit of 60 degrees!

Trying this experiment on a 'hot day' with a room temperature of 30 deg
will result in a drive temperature of 67 deg C, almost certainly enough
to 'cook the drive' and cause bad sectors or worse.

Using a small desk fan on high speed from a foot away might just save
the day by dropping the case to room air temperature difference to below
the 3 degree mark from its unforced cooling temperature difference of 12
degrees (the drive will still need to run 25 degrees hotter than the case
unless there happen to be some token vent slots or small air gaps able to
admit some of the forced airflow into the case).

Pulling a Seagate drive out of its "Style over function" enclosure to
park it in a typical SATA docking station will reduce its operating
temperature by a good 20 to 25 deg C. As I said up front, I think you've
rather over-thought the lack of forced cooling with SATA docking
stations. :-)

BTW, I used to buy such external USB2/Firewire enclosures to fit my own
spare desktop drives into for use as backup/large sneakernet data
containers up until about a decade ago. At the time, it seemed like "A
Good Idea" but, as per usual, this turned out not be true, mainly, it has
to be said, because I found myself upgrading disk capacity which
eventually resulted in the need to also replace those external enclosures
with modern ones not afflicted by the 400GB capacity limit of the USB
bridge chips used.

A few years after SATA was introduced, it occurred to me (a few years
back now) that a SATA docking station would provide the ideal solution,
requiring that all I needed to do was have a ready means of storing my
bare backup SATA disk drives in ESD safe trays or packaging.

As a cheap cost effective external drive based backup solution, you'd be
hard pressed to do better than invest in an eSATA/USB2 or USB3 SATA drive
docking station (or two) and a collection of bare drives.

[1] These "Seagate Specials" had the once end user programmable built in
spin down timer *power* saving feature hard coded into the drive's
firmware making it impossible to get rid of the annoying spin down
setting.

Seagate ought to have known better than to confuse this *power* saving
feature for an overheat mitigation strategy which, on protracted backup/
restore sessions was doomed to utter failure and even worse, induce
extreme temperature cycling which would only accelerate the ageing
process caused by all these extra thermally induced stress fatigue cycles.

If the IT press ran an award ceremony for "World's Most Stupidest
Manufacturer of IT Peripherals", Seagate would have won it hands down
during at least the whole of the past decade (with Western Digital
running a very close second for their infamously ultra short 8 second
time-out default head unloading on desktop drive models - the only saving
grace compared to Seagate's act of utter stupidity being the existence of
the readily available wdidle3 utility to fix the 8 second head unload
nonsense).

I don't know about others' opinions on this but I don't think the
ability to consistently win such stupidity awards counts as a positive
when it comes to choosing whose hard disk drive products will be included
on your next shopping list.

--
Johnny B Good

On 19/08/16 21:38, Terry Pinnell wrote:
I'm looking for an external USB drive of 4 TB or larger and would
appreciate a few opinions here please. The trouble with my recent
decision to focus on the critical reviews at amazon.co.uk is that I
quickly reach the conclusion that there's *no* satisfactory drive on
the market!

Toshiba or Seagate!

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On Sun, 21 Aug 2016 07:54:02 -0500, jerryab wrote:

On Sat, 20 Aug 2016 07:00:15 -0700, Bob F wrote:

On 8/20/2016 6:52 AM, wrote:
...
I have been using a Seagate GoFlex USB3 drive (4TB) drive and
enclosure for 18-24 months as a data backup. It has worked with no
problems. It is powered 24/7 but is only connected to the PC to make a
backup once per month. I also have an HGST 4TB drive that is installed
in a generic USB3 case (about a year now) and it also has no problems.
I have another HGST 4TB used as online storage in a RAID box. Again,
no problems.


Why do you power the USB driv 24/7 if you only use it once a month? It
would seem that powering it all the time only opens you up to power line
fault damage that could trash the drive.

The drive is connected to a battery UPS, as are all my electronics (I
have 3 battery UPSes), so power line issues are no problem. The greatest
wear-and-tear on electronics is startup, so leaving it spinning reduces
that issue. I can power it off and take it if needed.

Unless Seagate have given up on winning the "World's Stupidest
Manufacturer of IT Peripherals" award time after time with their Seagate
Specials used in their external drive products such as their FreeAgent
and GoFlex products, I think you'll find that the disk *doesn't* spin
24/7, more likely, it spins down after 10 to 15 minutes on an immutable
spin down timer hard coded into its firmware.

My PC also runs 24/7.

I have been using the UPSes for some years. This building was hit by
lightning a few years ago. It took out a number of electrical stacks,
including several in my apartment. No problems with the devices (TV,
computer, external drives, router, game system, DVD player, etc)
connected to the UPSes. As the UPSes all have the manufacturer's
warranty to replace any device damaged if a power surge gets through the
UPS, it functions as replacement-cost insurance on the devices for as
long as I own and use the UPSes. Replacing the batteries every 4-5 years
is CHEAP insurance.

If you're in an area prone to lighting damage and line surges, the cost
of batteries on a 4 to 5 year cycle *is* cheap insurance. However, are
you replacing them before they're completely shagged (technical term) or
when they've reached the stage where they've become a liability? A
*useful* battery life of even 4 years on a UPS is good going unless
you're talking about heavy duty data centre grade kit.

If your UPS kit floats each 12 volts worth at the 13.8 volt mark, you'll
be lucky to see 3 years useful life from them. If you can adjust the
float voltage down to 13.5 volts, you'll get a longer life (although this
will likely trim some 5 to 10 percent off the UPS's specified autonomy)

The likes of APC and co prefer to use the absolute upper float charge
voltage limit since it maximises the autonomy out of a given battery
capacity specification. They don't mind that the customer finds
themselves facing a relatively expensive battery replacement exercise
some 3 years down the line, typically well after the original warranty
has expired.

Once more we see the obvious signs on "Bean Counteritis". The proper
solution is to specify a battery with a 5 to 10 percent larger capacity
and use the less corrosive 13.5 volt float charge setting to double
(perhaps even triple) the battery life. Once again we're witness to the
downside of "Free Competition", not that free competition is all bad,
just unregulated free competition, the downsides of which can be so
easily hidden behind the smokescreen of marketing copy within the
specification sheet.

--
Johnny B Good

In article ,
Johnny B Good wrote:
On Fri, 19 Aug 2016 13:08:09 -0400, Paul wrote:

====snip====


[ ... ]

If the IT press ran an award ceremony for "World's Most Stupidest
Manufacturer of IT Peripherals", Seagate would have won it hands down
during at least the whole of the past decade (with Western Digital
running a very close second for their infamously ultra short 8 second
time-out default head unloading on desktop drive models - the only saving
grace compared to Seagate's act of utter stupidity being the existence of
the readily available wdidle3 utility to fix the 8 second head unload
nonsense).

I don't know about others' opinions on this but I don't think the
ability to consistently win such stupidity awards counts as a positive
when it comes to choosing whose hard disk drive products will be included
on your next shopping list.


For systems that I care about, I use Raid Edition drives. They cost
more, but are far more reliable than the cheapie consmer models.


Gary

On Fri, 19 Aug 2016 14:38:59 +0100, Terry Pinnell wrote:

I'm looking for an external USB drive of 4 TB or larger and would
appreciate a few opinions here please. The trouble with my recent
decision to focus on the critical reviews at amazon.co.uk is that I
quickly reach the conclusion that there's *no* satisfactory drive on
the market!

Apart from quietness, fast start-up time after idle periods and
no-brainer setup, the only requirement I have is that, unlike one WD
drive I came across, it should support Win 10's system image facility.


I am making system image backups from Win10 to one of these,
using Win10's system image backup facility.
Seagate 4 TB STDR4000302 portable USB drive.
http://www.seagate.com/au/en/consume...ku=STDR4000302


Are you looking for a "portable" or a "desktop" external USB drive?
A "desktop" external hard drive would be a little cheaper.


--
Kind regards
Ralph

Ralph Fox wrote:

On Fri, 19 Aug 2016 14:38:59 +0100, Terry Pinnell wrote:

I'm looking for an external USB drive of 4 TB or larger and would
appreciate a few opinions here please. The trouble with my recent
decision to focus on the critical reviews at amazon.co.uk is that I
quickly reach the conclusion that there's *no* satisfactory drive on
the market!

Apart from quietness, fast start-up time after idle periods and
no-brainer setup, the only requirement I have is that, unlike one WD
drive I came across, it should support Win 10's system image facility.


I am making system image backups from Win10 to one of these,
using Win10's system image backup facility.
Seagate 4 TB STDR4000302 portable USB drive.
http://www.seagate.com/au/en/consume...ku=STDR4000302


Are you looking for a "portable" or a "desktop" external USB drive?
A "desktop" external hard drive would be a little cheaper.

Desktop. For example, this is one I'm considering:

Seagate Backup Plus 5TB USB 3.0 Desktop 3.5 inch External Hard Drive
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Bac...tb+backup+plus
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Bac...dp/B00IT2K1QE/

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

wrote:

On Fri, 19 Aug 2016 14:38:59 +0100, Terry Pinnell
wrote:

I'm looking for an external USB drive of 4 TB or larger and would
appreciate a few opinions here please. The trouble with my recent
decision to focus on the critical reviews at amazon.co.uk is that I
quickly reach the conclusion that there's *no* satisfactory drive on
the market!

Apart from quietness, fast start-up time after idle periods and
no-brainer setup, the only requirement I have is that, unlike one WD
drive I came across, it should support Win 10's system image facility.

I have been using a Seagate GoFlex USB3 drive (4TB) drive and
enclosure for 18-24 months as a data backup. It has worked with no
problems. It is powered 24/7 but is only connected to the PC to make a
backup once per month. I also have an HGST 4TB drive that is installed
in a generic USB3 case (about a year now) and it also has no problems.
I have another HGST 4TB used as online storage in a RAID box. Again,
no problems.

I would say the 4TB drive technology is mature, so buying it is a safe
bet. That means the cost per TB is fairly low. Expect low prices for
drives as the holiday sale season is nearly upon us (particularly in
the US). Save your money and shop hard this year for a sharp deal.

Thanks for all replies so far. Taking my time over buying as I
currently have more than enough external b/u capacity in *total*. But
it's spread over three units (from my previous XP PC): WD 3TB, Seagate
2TB and WD 1TB. So backing up the two internal drives (Samsung 950 Pro
256 GB SSD, WD 4TB), plus imaging the SSD, is 'messy' and that will
increase as usage of the 4TB grows.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

On Tue, 23 Aug 2016 06:46:33 +0100, Terry Pinnell wrote:

Ralph Fox wrote:

On Fri, 19 Aug 2016 14:38:59 +0100, Terry Pinnell wrote:

I'm looking for an external USB drive of 4 TB or larger and would
appreciate a few opinions here please. The trouble with my recent
decision to focus on the critical reviews at amazon.co.uk is that I
quickly reach the conclusion that there's *no* satisfactory drive on
the market!

Apart from quietness, fast start-up time after idle periods and
no-brainer setup, the only requirement I have is that, unlike one WD
drive I came across, it should support Win 10's system image facility.


I am making system image backups from Win10 to one of these,
using Win10's system image backup facility.
Seagate 4 TB STDR4000302 portable USB drive.
http://www.seagate.com/au/en/consume.../backup-plus/?
sku=STDR4000302


Are you looking for a "portable" or a "desktop" external USB drive?
A "desktop" external hard drive would be a little cheaper.

Desktop. For example, this is one I'm considering:

Seagate Backup Plus 5TB USB 3.0 Desktop 3.5 inch External Hard Drive
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Bac...rnal-Drive/dp/
B00IT2K1QE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471448448&sr=8-1&keywords=seagate+5tb
+backup+plus
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Bac...rnal-Drive/dp/
B00IT2K1QE/

It comes as no surprise that Seagate are currently offering the cheapest
cost per terabyte on their SMR based external storage boxes (they're
trying to rebuild their SoHo customer base back up in the face of the
loss of confidence one could reasonably expect after consistently winning
awards for "World's Stupidest Manufacturer of IT Peripherals" over the
past ten years or so).

A quick calculation suggests that at £26.67 per terabyte, for the 3 and
6 TB models, these are the ones to avoid. The 4, 5 and 8 TB all work out
at £25.00 per terabyte making the 5TB the best compromise on capacity
versus cost.

As I see it, you can either go for a single 8TB unit or a pair of 4TB
units for the same overall cost (assuming free delivery or the same
delivery charge on the complete order). It depends on how much data you
need to back up as to whether splitting a required 8TB's worth of backup
capacity into a pair of 4TB units for some redundancy is better than than
the "All your eggs in the one basket" space saving single external drive
that doesn't require swapping out halfway through an 8TB backup job.

Of course, this assumes that you believe Seagate have addressed the
reliability issues by taking function over styling seriously enough to
reduce the heat stress and extreme thermal cycling resulting from
confusing power saving spin down for a temperature reduction strategy as
they did with their previous external drive products[1].

Going by the pictures, it looks like *some* attempt to prevent drive
killing heat build up has been made by blessing, afaics, two of the
adjacent sides of the enclosure with ventilation holes (it would have
looked more convincing if they'd vented opposite faces, preferably the
end faces with one end indicating evidence of fan assisted cooling).

However, even less than ideal ventilation hole placement is going to
vastly improve[2] on their previous style over function ventless models,
possibly enough to avoid the serious overheating issue that had plagued
their earlier follies. One can only hope when placing one's order (after
all, there's always the option to drill out the vent holes or even drill
additional ones should the existing ventilation prove inadequate. :-)

Alternative to breaking the warranty by 'improving' the ventillation
would be to make a special fan cooled enclosure into which you can slot
however many of these external drives you'd like to group together (from
one to whatever). Just a thought on how best to counteract any such
shortcomings on Seagate's part and protect your 25 quid per terabyte
investment.

Sometimes it can be better to buy inadequately designed yet ever so
cheap kit when the required fix is so simple to implement as to make it
worth the modest costs involved in time and additional BoMs costs. :-)

[1] This was the equivalent of 'forcing the room lights to stay on
permanently' by turning the light switch on, smashing the lever off and
super-gluing it into the permanently on state with regard to the original
user controlled option to set a spin down time-out from 1 to 15 minutes
in one minute increments using a 4 bit control value where 0 stood for
the disabled setting on this power saving option built into all ATA
drives as a feature inherited from the very first ATA laptop drives.

Incidentally, also the same source for Western Digital's crazy 8 second
default head unloading feature which had been thoughtlessly applied to
the physically larger desktop drive models where it became harmful to the
life of those drives - the mechanics of head unloading just don't scale
well when applied to the larger parts of a 3.5 inch desktop drive.

[2] Even if they're not quite adequate enough to keep the SMR drive cool
enough in 30 deg plus room temperature conditions, resorting to placing a
small desk fan near by on medium to high speed should prove a more
beneficial remedy than it was for their previously unvented models
(although care should be taken to avoid the possibility of stalling the
existing convectively generated internal airflow).

--
Johnny B Good